LOGIT VERSUS DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS: A SPECIFICATION TEST WITH APPLICATIONS TO CORPORATE BANKRUPTCIES

Journal of Econometrics 31(1986), 151–178.

Andrew W. Lo

Two of the most widely used statistical techniques for analyzing discrete economic phenomena are discriminant analysis (DA) and logit analysis. For purposes of parameter estimation, logit has been shown to be more robust than DA. However, under certain distributional assumptions both procedures yield consistent estimates and the DA estimator is asymptotically efficient. This suggests a natural Hausman specification test of these distributional assumptions by comparing the two estimators. In this paper, such a test is proposed and an empirical example involving corporate bankruptcies is provided. The finite-sample properties of the test statistic are also explored through some sampling experiments.

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